You Could Be Buried With Eleanor Rigby

We've seen some fairly weird Beatles-related memorabilia auctioned off over the years, but there's always something even stranger just waiting to be sent to the auction block — as evidenced by the pending sale of Eleanor Rigby's grave deeds.

The Guardian reports that an auction scheduled for September will settle the new owner of the rights to be buried alongside Eleanor and a number of her fellow Rigbys at the graveyard adjacent to St. Peter's in Woolton, Liverpool. Under U.K. law, the disturbance of human remains is not allowed for 75 years from the date of the last full burial in a family plot. As the last person to be buried in the plot was laid to rest in 1949, this new sale would allow the next owner to follow suit in seven years.

But that's not all. The burial rights also come with a certificate of purchase — very important in cases like these — as well as a Bible with Eleanor Rigby's name written inside. Continuing the Beatles theme of the auction, the original handwritten score for "Eleanor Rigby" is also hitting the block, and expected to bring in more than $25,000.

"Each item is fantastic, unique and of significant historical importance in itself," said a representative for the auction house managing the sale. "To have both to come up for auction at the same time is an incredible coincidence and it will be exciting to see how they perform. I expect there to be fierce bidding from across the globe."

As the Guardian's report notes, the Beatles never had any direct affiliation with the Eleanor Rigby buried in the St. Peter's graveyard, and Paul McCartney maintained at one point that the song wasn't named for a real person. But given that this is the church where McCartney met John Lennon, there may have been some subconscious influence at play.

"I thought, I swear, that I made up the name Eleanor Rigby," McCartney mused in the Beatles' Anthology. "But it seems that up in Woolton Cemetery, where I used to hang out a lot with John, there's a gravestone to an Eleanor Rigby. Apparently, a few yards to the right there's someone called McKenzie."